Permission to Breathe

Let's make this entire column about Terri Schiavo!

Why not? Congress, which has nothing better to do, just devoted all of a weekend and part of a Monday maneuvering to pass a law with the exact title, "An Act for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo." The law directs that one specific federal court, the US District Court of the Middle District of Florida, shall have jurisdiction over one specific case, namely that of whether Theresa Marie Schiavo's life support should be curtailed.

The good news is that the court is only granted jurisdiction to determine whether Schiavo's existing rights under federal law have been or are about to be violated. In other words the court has been given jurisdiction, by an act of Congress, no less, that it already had! (Tomorrow they may pass a law directing you to breathe!)

The bad news is that the intent of the act is to bring the power of Congress to bear on this case, even though Congress has no legal power in the matter, and they know it. To that end the act specifically directs the court to ignore all previous rulings in this case. The court is also directed to ignore any ongoing litigation in the state courts. ("You're to breathe, citizen, but only through this tube… ")

Whoa! That's a nasty slap in the face to your silly Founding Fathers and their silly "separation of powers," isn't it? Who needs it, when we can just order some judge, anywhere we want, in any individual case we want, to pay attention to nothing but what we say. Ignore the man behind the curtain!

Congress to the judge: "Fifteen years of court fights repeatedly resulting in rulings in favor of Michael Schiavo? What, fifteen years of what? Listen to your Congress… You are getting sleepy, very sleepy, and when we snap our fingers you will wake up and rule that Terri Schiavo's rights have been violated."

And if the court refuses to obey Congress, like on the grounds that they can take their unconstitutional law and stick it where their heads usually rest, no problem. Congress can just pass another act "to relieve the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo, again," this time in a different court. If that doesn't work, well I don't know, maybe they would have to get serious and pass a law that would actually legislate something, but they'll cross that bridge when they get to it.

All of this could have been avoided if ten or fifteen or better, twenty years ago, Congress had sat down and actually considered such situations and what they would want to happen in these sorts of cases. Then Michael Schiavo would not have spent fifteen years of his life fighting in state courts for something that Congress was just going to rule against, after all of it.

Oops, did I say rule? Is that what they're doing, ruling in this case? Gosh, no, they wouldn't do that, because that would be unconstitutional. They're just ordering a federal court to rule, their way, according to new rules that they just invented, in a long-fought pre-existing case.

Can you say ex post facto? But they believe they can get around that by a technicality: she isn't dead yet. So the "facto" hasn't happened. So they can still butt in, without regard for that little detail of the constitution.

Can you say bill of attainder? Again, they've got a technicality: courts have only interpreted the prohibition of bills of attainder to include such things as depriving specific people of life, liberty, or property in cases where Congress would intend to punish them. But the intent here is to deprive Terri Schiavo of her right to refuse life support in accordance with her own wishes (as determined by the courts) for her own good, not to punish her.

Hey, I got my outrage back!